


Don't be afraid

by manubibi



Category: Free!
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Rei, Established Relationship, Fluffy Ending, M/M, One Shot, PWP without Porn, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8255044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manubibi/pseuds/manubibi
Summary: It definitely comes as a shocking surprise, when Nagisa shows the palm of his hand, open, to Rei. In the middle of it rest a pair of pills, white and round without anything written on them. Small fic prompted to me on tumblr.





	

Nagisa is not a dangerous creature. Actually, most of the time his behavior and appearance are absolutely angelic: whenever he hops on his feet in excitement, his soft blond curls bounce ridiculously in a way that’d make one want to dive their fingers into them and marvel at their fluffiness. His cheeks are round, his eyes big and always filled with joy, a pure friendliness that even at a first glance makes him look completely harmless.   
So he’s not dangerous. All he seeks is fun, and company. All he wants is not to be alone. 

So it definitely comes as a shocking surprise, when he shows the palm of his hand, open, to Rei. In the middle of it rest a pair of pills, white and round without anything written on them. No indication of what they are or what they do. Thus, Rei’s concern is fully justified when he fixes his glasses on his nose shaking his head. Especially because, since they are in a park, it may look very different to an outside onlooker.   
“Nagisa-kun, I don’t trust this. And what is it even for?” He asks, giving his small boyfriend a skeptic look.  
“It’s okay! It’ll just make you horny!” Nagisa replies, with a calm smile, as if he wasn’t offering what seems to be a drug of unknown origin or composition to his own best friend, recently-turned lover. Two months ago, to be precise.   
“N-Nagisa-kun, why?” Rei yelps, jumping up from the bench they’d been sitting on and taking a step back while his cheeks bloom with red, his throat constricting.   
_Sex_. Sex has always been a difficult topic, and contrarily to his usual behavior that’s the one thing he never willfully talked about.   
“Why not?” Nagisa deflects, standing up as well and taking a step forward. “I promise you, it’ll be fun! I saw two senpai take them and after ten seconds they were speeding to the ‘happy place’ behind school and they were fine after!”   
Rei’s brows knit, and the look he gives Nagisa is filled with suspicion. There are so many questions to ask. What’s the ‘ _happy place_ ’? How does Nagisa know about it? What kind of activities take place in said place? Did Nagisa spy on two people and their private business? And how did he obtain these pills?  
“Come on, trust me, Rei-chan!” Nagisa adds, shoving a pill into Rei’s hand. “We’ll have lots of fun and nothing bad will happen.”  
“How do you know that? What if I’m allergic to something in this?” Rei questions him, and looks down at the small pill in his hand like it could kill him from one moment to the next. “And who says it works the way you think?”  
Nagisa’s smile fades a little, and his gaze lowers to the open palm of his hand.  
“It’s just… I thought- maybe with a little help you’d like me enough to, you know, to want to do it…” he mutters, with a blush spreading to his own cheeks, maybe a bit of embarrassment too.

Rei’s surprise is short-lived. _Of course_ something like this would happen. They got together two months ago, and despite having kissed and made out, despite having explored one another in a deeper and non-sexual way, somehow Rei always wiggled out from going anywhere near the point of stripping naked with Nagisa. The fact that this is not surprising does not mean it doesn’t feel like a weigh just dropped in the pit of his stomach out of the blue.   
He knew Nagisa would ask, and he knew Nagisa would want to do it. He just preferred thinking it would not happen one day, or the day after. And it’s funny, really: in general, Rei always faces their issues upfront, speaks up about them, and Nagisa is the one to avoid them, to hide them, to pretend everything’s alright because facing things bothers him, complicates or ruins things. And yet somehow these behaviors switched. Rei is the one finding himself cornered, with no other way to respond than the truth.   
“Nagisa-kun…”   
It’s easy to assume that if he’ll tell the truth, maybe Nagisa will leave, and everything they have will be ruined. After all, according to everything Rei knows, sex is crucial in relationships, it’s a cardinal point of them, and not having it severely threatens them. He read a lot of people’s opinion that a relationship without sex is worthless.   
He figured out that cannot be true. On the other hand, it’s nobody’s fault that Nagisa has needs and desires Rei simply cannot provide to without feeling a deep discomfort, without needing to escape from it.   
The mere idea of sex simply repulses him. He never understood his peers whenever they talked about wanting to hook up with girls, he never understood the appeal of inserting a penis into a vagina, or into an anus.   
He never experienced any will to do so, either. He always liked books and science more, he always preferred playing sports on his own, he always liked quiet and introspection more. Nobody had ever wanted anything more than friendly hanging out, and when they had somehow Rei had managed to distance himself before reaching a point where he’d have to face his oddity.   
And yet somehow Nagisa carved a space for himself, a bit forcefully maybe, but that is not something Rei would ever, ever blame him for. The tenderness in his eyes whenever Nagisa smiles is something he never had for anybody else before. For a while, he’d almost thought he simply could not love the way others do. Friends? Of course. But dating, kissing, a more profound contact? Unnecessary, and silly - that’s what he used to think. Space was always more interesting, until he found himself thinking there’s a whole universe within Nagisa. A crazy universe that never follows any rules of logic or physics. That’s the way he looks at him.   
To lose an universe like that is a prospective that makes shivers run up to his back. Rejection is unknown, but he knows it’s supposed to hurt. And yet Nagisa is there, right now, with a sad and hurt look on his face as he takes a little step back like he already decided he is not liked well enough. And like he was _used_ to it. 

That’s how it just so happens that Rei’s hands grab immediately both of Nagisa’s shoulders, forcing him to look up into his own eyes.   
“Nagisa-kun, I like you so much! I’ve never felt like this towards anybody, and I know that’s a cheesy line but it’s true!” He begins; in a sort of hurry. The only thing that stops him for a moment is Nagisa’s doubtful look. “It’s just I’m afraid of telling you that I don’t want that kind of contact, I never did, and it’s- it’s something I never wanted. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, and your body is also beautiful and attractive, I suppose- but I could never think of it any other way. It’s not that you’re not beautiful, it’s that I… think of it differently. You’re a work of art. You’re… beautiful to look at, but I just do not feel the need to touch you. And I’m very fond of you.”   
He tells Nagisa all that in a rush of words, like he has a clock ticking before Nagisa will stop listening. The grasp on the smaller’s shoulders tightens.   
“Please, believe me…”  
“So… you’ll never feel that way about me?” Nagisa hums, and it would be dishonest to say there isn’t disappointment in there. But he does not back down, or push Rei away.   
“I don’t know… I don’t know if I’ll always feel like this. But the way I feel about it now is… it’s… Ah!” Rei lights up, lifting a finger in the air and fixing his glasses again. “For example, you would not want to have intimate physical contact with a Bernini statue, no matter how beautiful and alluring it is,” Rei explains, the hold of his hands softening, and a little smile appearing on his lips despite the fear that still lingers and the coldness he once carried like an armor that threatens to wrap him back up. It’s Nagisa’s presence that changed him and made him open up to another way of seeing the world, after all. He’s a phenomenon that Rei still can’t figure out, something that exists outside of Rei’s perfect system of categorizing and understanding the world. And he’s in love with it - the unforeseeable, ever-changing tide that Nagisa keeps constantly changing in his life. It’s refreshing, and it’s challenging. It’s fun. 

Nagisa’s silence weighs between them like an increasingly heavy block of cement was opening up a hole under their feet and sucking them down, but eventually he does speak, with a simple shrug.  
“So you do like me, right?” He asks, shy, and despite the outward calm, his voice trembles a little out of sheer insecurity.   
“Of course I do!” Rei replies, right away, and another step forward makes their distance shorter again.  
“Because… I thought you’d accepted to be with me out of pity,” Nagisa continues, now rising his magenta gaze into Rei’s worried purple.   
Rei’s lashes flutter in shock.  
“Of course not! I would never have done that! I think better than that of you!” He protests, looking offended but with warmth now spreading wider in his chest.   
“Are you sure?” Nagisa asks again, and hope spreads from the center of his eyes to the rest of his face.  
“I’m sure! I want to know everything about you and talk to you every day, and hold your hand, and kiss you, and hug you, and-and I _do_ want to be with you for a very long time!” Rei sputters out, with his cheeks going redder and redder with each passing second.   
“Really really?” Nagisa hums, quiet and relieved, widening his arms and whining like a puppy. _Now he’s being overly-adorable on purpose._    
“Really really,” Rei replies with a soft chuckle, pulling him close into a hug. “So… do you still want to be with me?” He asks after a pause, a bit doubtful.   
“Yeah. I feel that way about you too,” Nagisa purrs, nuzzling his head into Rei’s chest. “I want to be with Rei-chan forever.”  
“But what about the… you know, the sex…?” Rei mentions, and his fingers pause their slow petting through Nagisa’s hair in awkward hesitation.   
“We’ll figure something out,” Nagisa hums quiet and confident all of a sudden, eyes falling shut in relaxation while he drops the two pills on the floor, only to lace his fingers around Rei’s wide back. “Because I want to be with you.”   
Rei’s lashes flutter with surprise and relief, before finally his shoulders melt and his arms wrap tighter around Nagisa’s small frame.   
“Okay. We’ll find something,” he repeats, in a happy daze. “Okay.” He pauses, allowing some calm to dawn on him. “I love you, Nagisa-kun,” he adds, low and soft, against Nagisa’s soft curls agitated by a quiet breeze.   
A little, light hum comes from somewhere against his neck, and he does sense Nagisa’s small hands rub little circles on his back.  
“Rei-chan loves me,” Nagisa repeats, with a low but excited giggle. “I love you too.”

When they go back to Rei’s house, there is no tension on his part when Nagisa goes on his toes to press a kiss on his lips, there is no subtle demand for something. And that is one less source of anxiety. That is fine. It’ll work out anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I last wrote anything, so I'm happy I could write anything at all, y'know?   
> Also, I'm ace myself and I've been trying to work asexuality into a reigisa fic for a while, so I'm happy I got the chance to!  
> Anyway, thanks to ibangedurdad on tumblr for the prompt which I tweaked a lil bit :"Wait Nagisa! You can't use that thing on me! What if it has dangerous side effects?" Nagisas grin gets wider. He is determined. "Don't worry babe, I'm sure it won't hurt you. It will just make you a little more {BLANK}" They stare at the device in Nagisas hands. {his crush/SO} shudders, then nods. "Ok, let's do this."  
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
